ehehtielyen

Cool that you're doing an AMA. When I was little I dreamed of working with Mercy Ships. I'm now in Internal Medicine so I think that's less useful to you...

A question: how do you deal with long term follow up? Do you refer people back to their local hospitals? Are they equipped to deal with that? And what's your adverse event rate? I'd guess that some of the procedures you do are quite tricky, and given that you're there only temporarily, handling adverse outcomes in a satisfying way would be quite difficult...

But is it really a bone marrow donation or a donation of mobilized stem cells? Here in the Netherlands, donors get r-GCSF for a couple of days and the stem cells can then be harvested from the peripheral blood. Only in small children (less blood volume) they still do the bone marrow aspiration under anesthesia thing... (Source: MD). Though the procedure is still quite a hassle and not a walk in the park, it's much less scary than multiple iliac crest punctures and engraftment rates etc are the same.

Thanks for the info! Then I wonder why they still call it bone marrow donation and not stem cell donation if it apparently makes such a difference in public perception.

Hi Karl, any tips for an aspiring trailrunner who's afraid to trip and fall on the downhill trails? I love the ascent but then I have to slow down to an almost walking pace on the descent.

Congratulations on your achievement!

Thank you for answering! I remember feeling really self-conscious during my plastic surgery rotation. The surgeon had this picture book filled with 'before' and 'after' pictures, and most 'before' pictures looked totally 'normal' to me, but he could point out all kinds of features that were 'wrong'...

Follow-up question, just out of curiousity: do you have any experience using autologous or allogeneic cell-based products? Do you see a role for them in cosmetic medicine, or do the available pharmacologic sustances fulfill most of the clinical need?